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New brain tech heals without surgery
Published 9 days ago • 5 min read
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Welcome to today's edition of The Good – a gentle pause in your day, filled with beauty, kindness, and inspiration. Each morning, we gather little reminders of what’s good in the world and place them in your inbox.
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What began with babysitting savings and a plot of land has become a blueprint for community-centered care in rural Nepal. A decade after being named CNN’s Hero of the Year, Maggie Doyne’s BlinkNow Foundation has grown from a tiny bamboo shack into the award-winning Kopila Valley campus. The school has served 1,000 students with tech-forward classrooms, gardens, healthy meals, daycare, and a program that launches graduates into college, trades, and jobs, reports CNN.
Today, Doyne and a team of 175 caregivers support 93 children at the Kopila Valley Children’s Village, alongside a home for at-risk girls, a full-service clinic, and training that helps Indigenous women and local farmers build livelihoods. But the story isn’t all rainbows. Doyne endured the unimaginable loss of her son in 2015, a grief she says nearly ended everything. Instead, healing became part of the work.
Her work signifies that lasting change is built in small, steady acts. Keep showing up. Keep loving. Keep planting what you can, where you are. It all adds up, and sometimes it adds up to an entire village.
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SOUND WAVES OVER SCALPELS
A new breakthrough from University College London and the University of Oxford could reshape the future of brain health. As reported by Newsweek, researchers have developed a noninvasive brain-stimulating helmet that uses focused ultrasound to reach deep regions of the brain with unprecedented precision. The technology offers what scientists call a paradigm shift in neuroscience, opening new possibilities for understanding brain function and treating conditions like Parkinson’s disease, depression, and tremors without surgery, risk, or pain.
Unlike traditional deep brain stimulation, which requires implanting electrodes, this new device safely modulates brain activity through gentle sound waves, allowing researchers to fine-tune areas as small as a grain of rice. In trials, the helmet successfully altered neural activity for up to two hours after use and is a first step toward therapies that could restore balance to disrupted brain circuits.
It’s an innovation that gives us hope: a tool that listens to the brain, learns from it, and helps heal it not by cutting, but by communicating. Researchers say, the goal is that this technology will soon empower people to live fuller, freer lives by transforming not only how we treat the brain, but how we understand it.
When students at a Maine high school break the rules, they’re given a surprising choice: sit through detention or take a hike. Literally. As reported by theWashington Post, counselor and avid outdoorswoman Leslie Trundy started offering “detention hikes” as an alternative to traditional punishment. What began as a reluctant experiment has become something transformative. Between pine trees and winding trails, students who once resisted the idea now find themselves talking, laughing, and leaving lighter.
The hikes, often on a nearby three-mile trail, include shared snacks and short readings from poets like Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver. Students return from the woods calmer, more connected, and sometimes, unexpectedly changed. One former skeptic now volunteers for the hikes just for the joy of it. Others say it’s helped them slow down, think differently, and even care more about school.
It’s a simple, hopeful idea: that time in nature, especially when offered with care, can shift behavior. By trading isolation for open air, Morse High is quietly proving what science (and poets) have long suggested: sometimes, to find your way forward, you just have to take a walk.
THE MENTAL HEALTH BOOST HIDING IN YOUR DAILY STEPS
Turns out, one of the simplest ways to lift your mood might also be the oldest: putting one foot in front of the other. A study found that walking as few as 5,000 steps per day was linked to lower symptoms of depression, with benefits continuing up to about 10,000 steps, reports Health. The research pulled data from nearly 100,000 adults, showing that even modest increases of just 1,000 extra steps a day, corresponded to a measurable boost in mental well-being.
While scientists emphasize that the findings are correlational, the message is clear: gentle, consistent movement matters. Walking is accessible, rhythmic, and grounding – and a chance to reconnect with your body, your surroundings, and maybe even your thoughts. The beauty lies in its simplicity: no special gear, no gym membership, just space to breathe and move through the world.
It’s a reminder that wellness doesn’t have to require reinvention or expensive equipment, sometimes it’s found in small, steady motion. A few thousand steps, a little sunlight, a few deep breaths. The path to feeling better might literally start right outside your front door.
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A SCANDINAVIAN SUMMER STEEPED IN MEMORY AND MEANING
Sometimes travel returns you to something you didn’t know you’d been missing. Art critic Sebastian Smee recounts to theWashington Post a summer journey through Sweden and Denmark that felt equal parts adventure and homecoming. What began as a family visit turned into a quiet revelation: the discovery of sculpture parks, museums, and coastlines that hold both artistic brilliance and personal history. At Wanås Konst in southern Sweden, sculptures seemed to breathe with the forest, a place where art and nature felt in conversation rather than competition.
From there, the trip wound through Denmark’s Ordrupgaard, with its bamboo fortresses and tranquil Hammershøi paintings, and the Louisiana Museum, a seaside haven where contemporary art meets timeless landscape. Each stop offered a meditation on beauty that feels grounded and deeply alive.
Photo by Kim Hansen, courtesy of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art: Louisiana Sculpture Park
Smee’s reflections remind us that art, like travel, is never just about seeing new things, but about feeling connected to the world. Sometimes, it’s in the quiet corners of a museum, or on a rain-soaked bike ride through the countryside, where we rediscover what’s worth holding close: connection, curiosity, and the wonder of being present.
brain sensing headband, multi sensor biofeedback device*
DEVOTIONS BY MARY OLIVER
selected poems on the natural world*
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